Olga Tokarczuk Tour: Northwestern, Duke, New Literature from Europe-NYC, ASEEES-LA, University of Toronto

Mon Nov 8 01:37:28 UTC 2010

THE POLISH CULTURAL INSTITUTE IN NEW YORK

PRESENTS

Bestselling Polish Author

OLGA TOKARCZUK on Tour

NOVEMBER 8-24, 2010

The Polish Cultural Institute in New York is honored to present OLGA
TOKARCZUK, one of Poland's leading novelists and feminist voices,
award winning author of Primeval and Other Times (Twisted Spoon Press,
2010), House of Day, House of Night (Northwestern, 2003), and "The
Ugliest Woman in the World" in Best European Fiction 2011 (Dalkey,
November 2, 2010), on her first NORTH AMERICAN TOUR with events at
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; Duke University in
Durham, North Carolina; the New Literature from Europe festival in New
York; the ASEEES (formerly AAASS) Convention in Los Angeles; and the
University of Toronto.  A full schedule with times and locations is
available at http://www.PolishCulture-NYC.org.

In New York Tokarczuk will be a guest at the NEW LITERATURE FROM
EUROPE Festival, an annual series of discussions and readings
featuring eight critically acclaimed European writers. Eight European
Cultural Institutes have teamed up within the framework of EUNIC
(European Union National Institutes for Culture) to present its
seventh edition with writes like Philippe Claudel (France), Kirmen
Uribe (Spain), Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany), Gerhard Roth (Austria),
Radka Denemarková (Czech Republic), Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), Gabriela
Adameşteanu (Romania), and Antonia Arslan (Italy). The moderator will
be distinguished writer André Aciman, chair of Comparative Literature
and director of the Writers' Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center.

American partners of New Literature from Europe are The Center for
Fiction, Words without Borders, and The Brooklyn Rail.

Born Poland in 1962, Tokarczuk completed a degree in psychology at the
University of Warsaw in 1985. She worked for several years as a
therapist in Wroclaw, and published her first book, a volume of poetry
in 1989. Her debut novel, _Podróż ludzi księgi_ (_The Journey of the
People of the Book_), appeared in 1993. It was followed, in 1996, by
two further novels: _E.E._ and _Primeval and Other Times_, the latter
of which won the first Nike Readers' Prize in 1997. Tokarczuk's next
books involved a turn away from linear narration. _Szafa_ (_The
Armoire_), a collection of novellas, appeared in 1997, and _House of
Day, House of Night_ (Northwestern U. Pr., 2003) originally in 1998.
Books since then have included a collection of stories stories, _Gra
na wielu bębenkach_ (_Playing on Many Drums_, 2001), _Ostatnie
historie_ (_Final Stories_, 2004), _Anna In w grobowcach świata_
(_Anna In in the Catacombs of the World_, 2006), and _Bieguni_
(_Runners_, 2007). The last of these is based on a sect of Old
Believers who roam the world as contemporary nomads, and received the
2008 Nike Prize for Best Book, Poland's highest literary award.
Tokarczuk describes these nomads and their motivation in an interview
with poet Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkalo:

"This kind of travelling is a deep challenge to the world in which we
live, which tries to keep us in place, give us a name, a surname, a
social security number and says: your place is here, this is your
role. Contesting this world, what Runners call being pinned down,
being caught by Satan, they negate the identity created by the
expectations of others. On a journey one falls quickly into a 'liquid
identity,' a person gains freedom from themselves."

Her latest novel, _Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych_ (_Drive
Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead_, 2009), represents a foray
into the genre of the crime novel, but it takes place in her familiar
territory of provincial Poland and in the interior space of the
heroine's mind.  Tokarczuk's strengths lie in her ability to maintain
a double focus on both archetypal structures and exigencies of modern
life, and to create work that is truly universal in scope.

_Primeval and Other Times_, translated from the Polish by Antonia
Lloyd-Jones (Twisted Spoon Press, 2010), was awarded the Kościelski
Foundation Prize in 1997, which established the author as one of the
leading voices in Polish letters. It is set in the mythical village of
Primeval in the very heart of Poland, which is populated by eccentric
folk characters. The village, a microcosm of Europe, is guarded by
four archangels, from whose perspective the novel chronicles the lives
of Primeval's inhabitants over the course of the 20th century. In
prose that is forceful and direct, the narrative follows Poland's
tortured political history from 1914 to the contemporary era and the
episodic brutality that is visited on ordinary village life.

Yet _Primeval and Other Times_  is a novel of universal dimension that
does not dwell on the parochial. A stylized fable as well as epic
allegory about the inexorable grind of time, the clash between
modernity (the masculine) and nature (the feminine), it has been
translated into most European languages.

Tokarczuk has said of the novel: "I always wanted to write a book such
as this. One that creates and describes a world. It is the story of a
world that, like all things living, is born, develops, and then dies."
 Kitchens, bedrooms, childhood memories, dreams and insomnia,
reminiscences, and amnesia -- these are part of the existential and
acoustic spaces from which the voices of Tokarczuk's tale come, her
"boxes in boxes."

Recently, she has also written the introduction to the Polish
translation of Judith Butler's _Gender Trouble_, and her essay
following the tragedy of the Polish presidential plane appeared in the
Op-Ed section of _The New York Times_.

For more information and the full tour schedule, see
http://www.PolishCulture-NYC.org

--
David A. Goldfarb
Literary Curator
Polish Cultural Institute
350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 4621
New York, NY 10118
--
tel. 212-239-7300, ext. 3002
fax 212-239-7577
http://www.polishculture-nyc.org/
--
http://www.davidagoldfarb.com

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